Canescin B

The recommendations for the management of osteoarthritis (OA) of the hip were proposed by EULAR in 2005. Among the most important objectives of the expert charged to provide these recommendations were their wide dissemination and implementation. Thus, the information generated can be used by each individual country to produce their own set of management guidelines and algorithms for treatment in primary care. According with that previously executed for the EU-LAR recommendation 2003 for the knee, the Italian Society of Rheumatology (SIR) has organised a Consensus on the EULAR recommendations 2005 for the management of hip OA. To obtain an acceptability as large as possible, the group of experts was composed by many physicians interested in the management of hip OA, including Orthopaedics, Rheumatologists, Physiatrists, and General Practitioners. Main aim of the Consensus was to analyse the acceptability and applicability of the recommendations according to own experience and local situations in the Italy. The results of this Consensus have demonstrated that a large majority of the EULAR recommendations are endorsed by the Italian experts. Furthermore, the final document of the Italian Consensus clearly indicated the need that the specialists involved in the management of hip OA strongly encourage the dissemination of the EULAR 2005 recommendations also in Italy.

Objective: To assess the efficacy of a multidrug protocol in recurrent acute pericarditis. We tried also to assess the specific role of colchicine. Methods: We studied 58 patients (34 males) in the largest monocentric observational study. All patients received prolonged courses of non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs; generally we do not start a corticosteroid in recurrent acute pericarditis, but if a steroid had already been started, we planned a very slow tapering; if necessary azathioprine, hydroxychloroquine, and other immunosuppressive drugs were used; 44 patients (27 males, 61.4%) were treated also with colchicine and 14 patients (7 males, 50%) were not given this drug. Results: After starting our protocol recurrences dropped from 0.48 to 0.03 attacks/patient/month (p < 0.00001) within 12 months and remained at the same level till the end of the follow-up (mean 8.1 years) in the whole cohort. In the 44 patients treated with colchicine recurrences dropped from 0.54 to 0.03 attacks/patient/month (p < 0.00001) within 12 months, and in 14 patients not given colchicine recurrences decreased from 0.31 to 0.06 attacks/patient/month (p = 0.002). In patients treated with colchicine the decrease was significantly higher (0.51) than in patients not taking this drug (0.25) (p = 0.006). Colchicine was discontinued by 16.3% of patients because of side effects. Conclusion: A multidrug protocol including non-steroidal anti-inflammatory drugs at high dosage, slow tapering of corticosteroid, colchicine, reassurance and close clinical monitoring is very effective in recurrent pericarditis; this improvement is more dramatic in colchicine treated patients, but also patients who do not tolerate it can achieve good control of the disease.

A quantitative statistical analysis of perfusional medical images may provide powerful support to the early diagnosis for Alzheimer's Disease (AD). A Statistical Parametric Mapping algorithm (SPM), based on the comparison of the candidate with normal cases, has been validated by the neurological research community to quantify ipometabolic patterns in brain PET/SPECT studies. Since suitable "normal patient" PET/SPECT images are rare and usually sparse and scattered across hospitals and research institutions, the Data Grid distributed analysis paradigm ("move code rather than input data") is well suited for implementing a remote statistical analysis use case, described in the present paper. Different Grid environments (LCG, AliEn) and their services have been used to implement the above-described use case and tackle the challenging problems related to the SPM-based early AD diagnosis.